I’ve been an interested reader in the current PageRank blogstorm, but not an active participant. I haven’t been affected personally as this blog was created after the last toolbar update, so my PageRank has been 0.

After reading Andy Beard’s Real or Fake PageRank Update In Progress, I decided to see what the PageRank checkers were saying about my site. The answer: It seems I’ve jumped from PR0 to PR4! See the screenshot below.

There are a couple of 0s in there, but they are mostly 4. I’ve tried about 6 different checkers (just to make sure) and they all say the same thing.

Now, I’ll be thrilled if this stays true, and I do have some top quality backlinks pointing at my DualFeeds plugin page (which seems to be PR5), but I’ll be very surprised if it does stay at PR4.

If it does, then I will be a little embarrassed, because of the number of quality sites listed on Andy’s post which seem to be in the region of PR4. I’ll be horrified if both my site and Andy’s end up with the same PageRank – his site should be miles above mine, as anyone can clearly tell.

I’m not saying my site is bad, but Andy’s site is great. Not only that, it’s established – he has multitudes more content and backlinks than my site does. If you look at other indicators, such as traffic, my site is clearly just not in the same league as Andy’s. If we both end up with PR4, it will be a travesty and perfect evidence of PageRank just not working.

Andy, if you do read this, the two servers which are reporting me as 0, are reporting you as 3. This may indicate that these servers are showing the old value, before the update (but of course after the totally unfair penalties). I’m not even considering the possibility that you’ll be at three after this. I’m hoping you’re on 5, but even that would be too low.

12 responses on “Google PageRank From PR0 To PR4? Maybe…”

I guess I see things a bit differently than most. I figure Google can do what they think is in their interests. But what they do will cause other people to react. I posted that Google’s new pagerank calculations have opened the door for an alternative. Pagerank is often given too much importance but it is interesting to have some quick number to gage “authority.” Google pagerank did that somewhat – though the huge delay in updates was a pretty big drawback. I believe someone will come up with an alternative web page authority rank that will gain quick adoption.

On the matter of Google search results (which most seem to agree the public pagerank reductions are not affecting) that makes sense to me. Google can’t really do much of anything that will make the results they return worse. They could do some minor things that might make there results a bit worse than they could be. But anything very significant and users would turn to better results offered elsewhere. I still think Google’s results are best but Yahoo’s are not far behind in many cases. Google won’t impose “unfair” penalties that result in worse search results – in my opinion.

I actually agree with your first point. What’s more, I think most other people agree with you as well, despite the understandable fuss with PR penalties. I’ve heard people say time and time again that too much importance is give to PageRank and the usefulness of toolbar PR is limited because of the delay in updates.

My blog is a good indicator of this: 2 days ago I was PR0 and many advertisers wouldn’t want to touch me. Now, I’m suddenly PR4 and in a much better bargaining position. Obviously I didn’t just jump 4 places in two days – I was PR4 two days ago, but my toolbar PR didn’t refelect this. So as you say, limited usefulness for the way people want to use it.

The path is open for someone to come up with a better ranking system, but I think it will have to be someone with a high profile if it’s going to be adopted by all. There are several other ranking systems floating around, but people don’t use them. I’d like to see someone like Yahoo give it a go.

Nice to meet another Andy Beard fan 🙂 His site seems to have settled at a 4. I absolutely agree it’s not an accurate reflection of the “authority” of his site. I see what Google are trying to achieve, but Andy is certainly an innocent victim.

I too have just received my first PageRank – ironically I was waiting for it before I looked at any form of paid links (eg TLAs)! However, I shan’t be doing that now 😉

Welcome and Likewise! 🙂 I have a lot for time for Andy and 4 is just unfair for his site. A lot of people consider him an authority in many different areas, and this should be reflected in his PageRank.

On a happier note, I see you’ve got a PR of 5, which is great (and deserved)! I was just about to look at TLA, but I guess I’ll hold off for the moment and see what happens. I have just started doing sponsored posts using Pay Per Post – I’m not sure what effect this will have, if any…

Agree, and you’d be hard pressed to find a blogger with higher integrity – he’s a true role model, and one of the good guys.

Yes, thank you – in this climate I was really happy to get the “5” 🙂

Good luck with the sponsored posts, after seeing what’s happened to Andy (and others), I’d be nervous adding anything but AdSense – but I guess that’s probably the whole idea 😉 And that was only good for about $10 for the month I had it!

BTW in case you didn’t see my response, I’ve already flagged you for checking this week.

Congratulations, Stephen! I just found out yesterday that I moved from 3 to 4 yesterday! You are right that a lot of sites have been penalized but until Google comes out and clarifies I’m not sure if I’ll blame it on TLA altogether.

I just saw my buddy Chris at Blog-Op move to PR5 and his sidebar has a TLA affiliate link!

Either way, I think I’m like you and Meg just starting to look at ways to monetize my blog besides Adsense. Being a tech oriented blog, Adsense isn’t a great option for me since I talk about Firefo and most of my readers are ads-blind.

I’m not sure what the sponsored posts will do to PR, but for me, it’s worth the risk. Adsense has made me 35c in the last month – it works well on some sites, but not tech sites. I’ve done one sponsored post on something I wouldn’t have minded writing about anyway and it’s earned me $16.

This blog is not about making money, but I need to at least cover hosting, or my family will start wondering just why I’m paying to spend so much time on the computer! 🙂

The problem is I don’t think Google is going to come out and clarify the situation. I’m not sure if it’s TLA or Pay Per Post (which has also been mentioned as a possible cause) or something else. It is interesting that Chris is PR5 with TLA though.

For me, all I can do is keep going as I am and hope I don’t get hit with a penalty. I won’t stop sponsored posts (see previous comment), but I will hold off TLA until I hear more about what’s happening (from others if Google doesn’t say anything).

K, I’d like to see that too! We might have to wait until the dust settles a bit, because I’m not sure that even the SEO folks know exactly what’s okay and what’s not, but the first one who puts an article like that together will get a lot of traffic!

I think page rank is not as important as serp. The place you show up in search results for terms you want is more important than pr. If you have a pr 6 site and can not get listed in first 2 pages for search terms you want then site will get very little traffic from search engines.

I do like seeing my page rank high but what it is listed in search engines for and where is more important to me.